Kevin Thomas stands in the middle of 59th Street where he lives, near Shattuck. The drug dealers leave him alone because he is a Tae Kwon Do instructor...he once tried to teach the kids that deal, but it didn't take. He is friends with Patrick McCullough, who shot the youth recently. Oakland's 59th Street neighborhood is going through changes. An influx of homebuyers has changed the demographics and increased the vigilance against drug dealing.
By Brant Ward/SF Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Photo: Brant Ward

Kevin Thomas stands in the middle of 59th Street where he lives,...

Image 2 of 4

Tom Nemeth, a realtor who lives on 59th Street has three houses on two lots. He has been important in cleaning up the neighborhood. He looks across the street from his front porch.
Oakland's 59th Street neighborhood is going through changes. An influx of homebuyers has changed the demographics and increased the vigilance against drug dealing.
By Brant Ward/SF Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Photo: Brant Ward

Tom Nemeth, a realtor who lives on 59th Street has three houses on...

Image 3 of 4

mccullough_032_pc.jpg
Since 1994, Patrick McCullough has been complaining to Oakland police about drug dealers � and telling the young men who congregate in front of his house at 59th and Shattuck to move on. For his efforts, he has endured harassment, threats, vandalism and one assault. Patrick McCullough at his home on 2/25/05 in Oakland, CA. McCullough has been single-handedly taking on drug dealers that ply their trade in front of his North Oakland home and was briefly arrested - but not charged - after shooting one of them in the arm.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND S.F. CHRONICLE/ - MAGS OUT

Photo: PAUL CHINN

mccullough_032_pc.jpg
Since 1994, Patrick McCullough has been...

Image 4 of 4

500 block of 59th Street is between Shattuck and Telegraph avenues.

500 block of 59th Street is between Shattuck and Telegraph avenues.

Culture clash between homebuyers, drug dealers / Tense block in Oakland part of a neighborhood in transition

The residential block where a man who has crusaded against drug dealers shot and wounded a 16-year-old neighbor embodies many of the contradictions and conflicts of change in North Oakland.

When Patrick McCullough, 49, shot Melvin McHenry in the arm and torso on Feb. 18, it was the culmination of a 10-year battle to chase drug dealers away from the 500 block of 59th Street.

Prosecutors have not decided whether to charge McCullough or the teenager. Each maintains he acted in self-defense: McCullough said he opened fire after a group of young men punched him outside his home and he saw the youth reaching for a gun, while the teenager said the older man threw the first punch.

Related Stories

McCullough and his family are considering moving. Meanwhile, police patrols are nearly constant on that block and a nearby stretch of Shattuck Avenue. At times, the street may feel like a tense war zone with clusters of young men hanging around at all hours.

But the block is also part of major demographic changes that are sweeping Oakland, as newcomers buy older homes and fix them up. Surrounded on three sides by wealthier areas in Emeryville, Berkeley and Oakland's Rockridge District, the North Oakland neighborhood has gained a reputation as one of the last good deals in the urban Bay Area -- a mile from Berkeley Bowl supermarket and College Avenue's Market Hall shops and only two miles from Ikea and the Bay Street shopping center in Emeryville.

"This is still walking distance to Rockridge BART -- we're close to all the good stuff," said Tom Nemeth, a real estate agent who lives on McCullough's street. "We're building up a good head of steam on this block. Every time a house sells, you get a new neighbor who wants to clean things up."

The young professionals who invest their life savings and bet future earnings on homes there have little patience for street crime in the area, known as police beat 11X. And the houses are selling. A two-bedroom house went for more than $500,000 last fall. In January, a three-bedroom house a block and half away was listed at $535,000 and sold for $735,000 after 43 people made offers, Nemeth said.

That's a far cry from 1971, when Bob Brokl and his partner bought a rambling 1908 bungalow for $27,000 in the 600 block of 59th Street.

"There were no yuppies here then -- now they have firmly planted their flag -- but then it was hard to imagine the area improving," Brokl said. "It was a no-man's-land -- especially after dark, it was very unsafe."

The most crime, even then, was centered around the 500 block of 59th Street, the 5900 block of Shattuck Avenue and 10-acre Bushrod Park nearby, Brokl said. The park, where baseball great Rickey Henderson played as a boy, has long suffered from neglect and been overrun by drug dealers.

It evolved from an open-air heroin market in the late 1970s to a major crack cocaine zone in the late 1980s, police said. By the early 1990s, it was the scene of almost nightly gunfire, frequent burglaries and muggings.

The turning point came in 1992 after one of Oakland's most infamous killings: A man sprayed gunfire inside Bosn's Locker, a neighborhood bar now known as Dorsey's Locker. Two patrons -- including a retired police officer -- were killed, and eight others were wounded.

"After the Dorsey's Locker murders, things were too big to ignore," Brokl said. "You also starting getting some new people in the 1990s."

One of those new people was McCullough. He and his wife were part of a wave of newcomers, mostly blue-collar, first-time buyers who took advantage of flat real estate prices and low mortgage rates.

The McCulloughs bought their home in 1994 under a first-time buyers' program designed to provide stability in Oakland neighborhoods, under which they would lose half their equity if they left before 2014. The City Council is expected to consider emergency legislation later this month that would allow the McCulloughs to keep all their equity if they move elsewhere in the city.

For 10 years, the family has waged a dangerous -- and sometimes lonely -- campaign to improve the street, often calling police several times a day to report dealing, drug use and loitering. McCullough works as a radio technician while his wife runs a small family business. In the past decade, both of them have earned law degrees at night, and they are not afraid to sue or seek civil restraining orders against alleged drug dealers.

Other neighbors have also banded together to use the courts. Real estate agent Nemeth and 11 other residents have several nuisance suits pending in small-claims court against the owner of 544 59th St., who allegedly allowed drug dealers to take over the home. The group photographed and videotaped suspected drug deals for evidence. A similar suit in 2003 prodded the owner of a troubled property on the same block to sell.

"The drug dealing goes on at 59th and Shattuck all afternoon and into the night, and it's always the same group of scum," said Martha Shelley, who lives on the next block.

While their neighbors surreptitiously call police, the McCulloughs have been more vocal, often first asking the dealers to move on. Before the Feb. 18 incident, Daphne McCullough had taken to standing on her front landing and calling police with her cordless phone so the dealers knew the family would not tolerate their actions.

The couple have developed good relations with police, but at a price.

"They have become a target," said Lt. Lawrence Green, who oversees police patrols in North Oakland. "If not now, then in two months or two years. ... These guys have long memories."

Although crime in North Oakland dropped by 21 percent last year, the statistics don't really measure the "livability" of a block where drug dealers persist in plying their illegal trade, Green said.

Police, who are conducting undercover surveillance on the block, say vigilant neighbors have forced drug dealers to alter their tactics by frequently changing locations, posting more lookouts and hiding drugs in a variety of places.

The McCulloughs considered moving twice before, after Patrick McCullough was assaulted in 2003 and again in November after someone threw a five-pound chunk of concrete through their front window.

Their plight has especially touched African American families who have worked for years to improve the area and view the effort as an extension of the civil rights struggle.

"This is really a struggle for the life of this community," said Cynthia Slater, who lives on 58th Street. "Patrick is just trying to live out the dream that Martin Luther King envisioned. You just don't want to be run out of your neighborhood. But these youths are so lost they see Patrick as the enemy. This is so tragic. I can't bear to see him driven out like this."